648 ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR LOVERING. 
that it was inconceivable that a body should act where it was not. 
All our knowledge of mechanical forces is derived from the con- 
scious effort we ourselves make in producing motion. As this 
motion employs the machinery of contact, the force of gravitation 
is wholly outside of all our experience. The advocates of action 
at a distance reply, that there is no real contact in any case, that 
the difficulty is the same with the distance of molecules as that 
of planets, that the mathematics are neither long-sighted nor 
short-sighted, and that an explanation which suits other forces is 
good enough for gravitation. 
Comte extricated himself from this embarrassment by excluding 
causes altogether from his positive philosophy. He rejects the 
word attraction as implying a false analogy, inconsistent with 
Newton’s law of distance. He substitutes the word gravitation, 
but only as a blind expression by which the facts are generalized. 
According to Comte’s philosophy, the laws of Newton are on an 
equality with the laws of Kepler, only they are more comprehen- 
sive, and the glory of Kepler has the same stamp as that of 
Newton. Hegel, the eminent German metaphysician, must have 
looked at the subject in the same light when he wrote these 
words: —‘‘ Kepler discovered the laws of free motion; 4 dis- 
covery of immortal glory. It has since been the fashion to say 
that Newton first found out the truth of these rules. It has 
seldom happened that the honor of the first discoverer has been 
more unjustly transferred to another.” Schelling goes farther in 
the same direction: he degrades the Newtonian law of attraction 
into an empirical fact, and exalts the laws of Kepler into neces- 
sary results of our ideas. : 
Meanwhile, the Newtonian theory of attraction, under the skil- 
ful generalship of the geometers, went forth on its triumphal 
march through space, conquering great and small, far and neat 
until its empire became as universal as its name. The whirlpools 
of Descartes offered but a feeble resistance, and were finally 
dashed to pieces by the artillery of the parabolic comets; and the 
rubbish of this fanciful mechanism was cleaned out as completely 
as the cumbrous epicycles of Ptolemy had been dismantled by 
Copernicus and Kepler. The mathematicians certified that the 
solar system was protected against the inroads of comets, and the 
border warfare of one planet upon another, and that its stability 
was secure in the hands of gravitation, if only space should be 
